Religion & Liberty Article Listing

David Noebel ambitiously defends the biblical Christian worldview as “the one worldview based on truth” as he examines its chief rivals: Marxism/Leninism and secular humanism. In doing so, he underscores several significant points: First, beliefs matter. They are not simply “preferences.” A battle of ideas is a welcome advance beyond the anti-intellectualism of early fundamentalism, warm-hearted pietism, and lazy relativism. Second, beliefs have contexts and consequences. Noebel presents beliefs in the contexts of comprehensive worldviews, analyzing their implications for a variety of disciplines. Lastly, his extensively documented research usually avoids caricature, as he often relies on key sources. He generally presents what opposing worldviews believe before criticizing them. In short, he avoids a privatized, anti-intellectual...

R&L:Please explore with us the way in which certain human virtues were compromised by the years of Communist rule in your country.

Klaus: Basic human virtues such as thrift, honesty, and fidelity can grow and flourish only in an environment of individual freedom and self-responsibility. Communist totalitarianism deprived people of both of them, made them more passive, more cowardly, and more resigned than in countries with political pluralism, property rights, and market structures.

R&L:In the long term, do you believe that the market system will encourage a resurgence of these virtues?

Klaus: People always pursue their self-interest, no matter what system they live in. Only ways...

The recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, serves as a blueprint for a possible renaissance in economic thought. The encyclical blends philosophical traditions providing a new methodological approach for philosophy of economics. Using Centesimus Annus as a model, I set out to investigate new philosophical approaches to political economy. I investigated the inherent connections between ethics and economics through a presentation and augmentation of the value theory and ethics of the Austrian Economist, Ludwig von Mises.

Mises’ Human Action is compared with the value-based ethics of Dietrich von Hildebrand and the anthropology of Karol Wojtyla as found in Ethics and The Acting Person, respectively. The result of this dialogue is the enhancement of Austrian economics...

When a person gains power over other persons–political power to force other persons to do his bidding when they do not believe it right to do so–it seems inevitable that a moral weakness develops in the person who exercises that power. It may take time for this weakness to become visible. In fact, its full extent is frequently left to the historians to record, but we eventually learn of it. It was Lord Acton, the British historian, who said: “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Please do not misunderstand me. These persons who are corrupted by the process of ruling over their fellow men are not innately evil. They begin as honest men. Their motives for wanting to direct the actions of others may be purely patriotic and altruistic. Indeed, they may wish only “to do good for the people...

An atheist is rarely asked to write an essay on “religion’s positive role in society,” but it is fitting that this request came from the Acton Institute. Lord Acton (1834-1902) was a Catholic, a classical liberal, and a great historian who devoted his life to the history of liberty.

Acton always stressed this important truth: No one group or movement, religious or secular, deserves exclusive credit for the theory and evolution of free institutions. All historians should avoid the unpardonable sin of “making history into the proof of their theories.” Instead, the historian should try “to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own.”

Acton is one of my intellectual heroes, and I hope this essay does justice to his memory. Using...

With this simple statement from his 1962 book, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, Frank S. Meyer defined the goal of postwar conservatism: to create a society in which men are free to pursue virtue but not enforce virtue at the point of a gun.

After World War II, when collectivism seemed triumphant, individuals who opposed the welfare state for different reasons banded together in order to fight it. Yet the tension between the traditionalists and libertarians threatened to tear the conservative movement apart. Meyer showed the groups what they had in common by pointing out where they were each mistaken.

The book, Love and Profit: the Art of Caring Leadership by James A. Autry, arrived within a few days. Inside the fly cover was a comment by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of Megatrends 2000. “The most caring (loving) book about management we have ever read. A real breakthrough. We predict it will become a classic.”

“Wow! That’s pretty heavy stuff,” I thought. Can any book on management live up to that statement? I had my doubts … After all, I had just retired as CEO of one of Fortune’s top 100 companies in America. I had spent 41 years with the same company–38 of those years in management positions. So I was really anxious to see what great insights Mr. Autry was going to share with the world.

Schoeck defines envy as “a drive which lies at the core of man’s life as a social being…[an] urge to compare oneself invidiously with others.” Denying the egalitarian dogma that envy is spawned by circumstance and can be cured by removing socioeconomic inequalities, he maintains, less flatteringly but far more believably, that envy is inherent in our nature, citing such compelling evidence as sibling rivalry among small children.

Envy is not wholly negative; Schoeck plausibly argues that social forces could not operate without it. Awareness of the potential envy of others, and fear of arousing it, comprise a mighty force for social control. For example, envy of possible gains from receiving inequitable treatment deters most people from seeking favors from government and thus helps preserve equality...

R&L:You are a pastor and also speak weekly to hundreds of thousands of people on national television. In your opinion, why is it important for Christians to be grounded in sound economic thinking?

Kennedy: Unsound economic thinking can lead to disastrous results and suffering for hundreds of millions of people. Consider the catastrophic impact on the vast number of people who had to live under the false economic thinking that produced communism.

Our own society contains many examples of the effects of unsound economics. We have given up the free enterprise economy envisioned by the founders of this nation and have followed many socialist principles.

During the summer of 1980, I met weekly for breakfast, prayer, and study with a minister friend of mine. A warm-hearted, intelligent man, Bob Hager kept challenging me to broaden my interest from the biblical studies, theology, and apologetics that were my great loves to include social concerns. One week, he told me of a book he’d read recently – Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. “Cal,” Bob said, “you’ve simply got to read this book. It’ll change your life.“

“Who, me? Read a book on economics and poverty?” I thought. “No interest.” But Bob shamed me into reading it, insisting that I learn to demonstrate the love I professed.

And, yes, reading Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger changed my life. As I read...

Multinational corporations (MNCs) engage in very useful and morally defensible activities in Third World countries for which they frequently have received little credit. Significant among these activities are their extension of opportunities for earning higher incomes as well as the consumption of improved quality goods and services to people in poorer regions of the world. Instead, these firms have been misrepresented by ugly or fearful images by Marxists and “dependency theory” advocates. Because many of these firms originate in the industrialized countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and Italy, they have been viewed as instruments for the imposition of Western cultural values on Third World countries, rather than allies in their economic development. Thus, some proponents of these views urge the expulsion of these firms,...

The environment is increasingly becoming a religious issue, as a host of environmental advocates attempt to “green” the church. More than a dozen volumes have been issued over the past two years alone, and new books seem to pour forth almost every day. Among the odder contributions—at least to anyone who believes in orthodox Christianity—are After Nature's Revolt and From Apocalypse to Genesis, both from Fortress Press.

The underlying premise of all of these eco-theological books is that we face an environmental crisis, “a silent but effective revolt” by nature, in social ethicist Dieter Hessel's words, with the earth “withdrawing its awesome, vital diversity while lashing back to protest human insults.” In his view, the catastrophe is omnipresent: Renewable resources are being...

R&L: With the world-wide decline of socialism, many individuals think that the environmental movement may be the next great threat to freedom. Do you agree?

Ray: Yes, I do, and I'll tell you why. It became evident to me when I attended the worldwide Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June. The International Socialist Party, which is intent upon continuing to press countries into socialism, is now headed up by people within the United Nations. They are the ones in the UN environmental program, and they were the ones sponsoring the so-called Earth Summit that was attended by 178 nations.

In June 1991, the Presbyterian Church approved a historic statement of faith that made environmental concerns part of the official canon of the church. The 80-line prayer enumerated pollution of the planet as a sin against God, saying people “exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”

A month later, the Episcopal Church closed its 11-day governing session with a united call to promote ecology. Viewing pollution as a religious issue, it urged church leaders to “move forward at great speed to respond to the challenge.”

Environmentalism, it seems, has truly become a religious movement. Religious undertones and rumblings have long hinted at a “new paganism,” but now that paganism is coldly upon us. What is it about environmentalism that...

During 1990 my nation, Australia, was graced by the visits of two North American thinkers anxious to help us get our national house in order. The thinkers in question - Drs. Paul Ehrlich and David Suzuki - loom large among the stars in the radical environmentalist sky. Whilst in Australia they were asked by a television journalist anxious for a ten-second “spot” to state in twenty-five words or less the basic conviction they most would like to communicate to their “down-under” audience. Their answer was simple. “Economic growth,” they asserted, “is not the answer to the great environmental problems of our age. Economic growth is itself the key problem.”

Taking that utterance as their text, Drs. Ehrlich and Suzuki went on to deliver an impassioned homily, a homily taking the form of a list of evils allegedly spawned by economic growth: A...